ACTU takes aim at state Labor policies

The ACTU has thrown its support behind the campaign to protect public services and jobs in NSW and South Australia amid rising tensions between the federal Labor government and the trade union movement.

Among the resolutions likely to be passed by the ACTU national executive today is a warning to the Rann South Australian government that its plans to cut 3750 public sector jobs and privatise forestry are contrary to Labor Party policy.

But the ACTU has stopped short of endorsing SA unions’ calls for a leadership change in the SA government.

The peak union body has also backed the campaign of NSW unions against privatisation. This came as Electrical Trades Union NSW boss Bernie Riordan announced he would step down from his position of state ALP president after pressure from Premier
Kristina Keneally
over his union’s threat to endorse non-Labor candidates for the March election.

Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
spoke at the meeting, in a move that signals her intention to be closer to the union movement than her predecessor Kevin Rudd, who never attended ACTU executive meetings.

Ms Gillard’s office said she committed to meet union leaders regularly next year through the Australian Labor Advisory Council and that these meetings would “serve as a vehicle to do a lot more work together".

She vowed to rebuild ties between the union movement and Labor, but suggested she would reject proposals to move policies further to the Left.

“The Prime Minister said she intended to govern from the centre to the benefit of all Australians but that the party would pursue a vision that inspired ideas and motivated people to join the movement," Ms Gillard’s spokeswoman said.

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In a reference to ongoing recriminations over Labor’s poor results in the federal and Victorian elections, Ms Gillard urged union leaders to focus on the future and stop rewriting versions of history, according to people who attended the meeting.

Union sources said the Prime Minister stared down calls from Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary
Brian Boyd
for a second round of industrial relations reforms, saying unions were free to call for this but she would strongly oppose it. She said it would be difficult for Labor to make changes to the Fair Work Act because it would need the support of independent MPs in the Parliament.

“She noted that the new Fair Work system was delivering responsible wage increases with a record number of agreements being made and a long-term decrease in industrial disputes," her spokeswoman said.

The Prime Minister warned that Australia faced a “patchwork economy" with different rates of growth across the country and between different industry sectors and said revenue from the mining tax would be used to tackle this problem.

Ms Gillard did not endorse the call by Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens for a “stabilisation fund" to save income generated by the mining boom, but said the government was instead investing in the future through its plans to use the resources tax to fund infrastructure, company tax cuts and increases in the superannuation guarantee.

Earlier, the national executive debated an external review of the union movement’s role in the federal election, which found the ACTU was perceived as being too close to the ALP. The review called for better campaigning and for the ACTU to “advance its political agenda with all political parties and independents".

The national secretary of the Australian Workers Union,
Paul Howes
, has previously declared himself a “Laborist’’ and criticised Victorian union leader
Dean Mighell
for supporting the Greens over the ALP.

The influential head of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association,
Joe de Bruyn
, is said to have advocated that unions adopt the middle ground’.

Trade Minister
Craig Emerson
said on ABC Radio yesterday that the government hoped there would be a “high level of co-operation", but the industrial and political wings of the labour movement were different.